


power is power

by galamiel



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: ish, this is kidfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 12:35:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5869786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galamiel/pseuds/galamiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the chains are a nightmare she has forged herself</p>
            </blockquote>





	power is power

“The only grey warden I know of is on the throne.”

Her hands rested on her lap, still and patient on the embroidered silk of her dressing gown, eyes unfocused and faraway as she stared into nothingness. The room was lit by a single flickering candle, the sun a bare glow dawning in the sky outside the heavily curtained windows.

She was restless.

 

It happened like this:

 

He hadn’t wanted the crown, not at the beginning, but there was something funny about the way she looked at him, the way she spoke to him, like he was too young to know, to understand, what was truly going on--they were both too young for the weight that was laid upon their shoulders but she was older than him, even if only by a few years, and he looked to her for guidance, followed her like the moon follows the earth, ever in her wake.

And then--

And then, he had looked to her with love.

Petals had fallen from his fingers when he’d held the rose out to her, pressing it into her hands: a gift, something she had not wanted and yet, by the curse of her upbringing, had not been able to reject.

They said that she was the only reason he had kept his shaky grasp on the throne.

“Whoever ‘ _ they’  _ actually are, right?” he laughed in response from the great chair on its dais and she, standing patiently next to him, had given him a compliant smile.

Closed-mouthed, as everything was with her.

 

It happened like this: 

 

Morrigan promised her a way to live.

She was selfish, egocentric, narcissistic, and Morrigan was her friend.

Before the massacre at Ostagar, her plan had been to spend as little time as possible with the Grey Wardens, and then take up her rightful place as teyrna of Highever. She would marry, and they would have three children, and she would reign as she had been raised to do, and she would, in turn, raise her children to reign when she died. She would avenge her family and continue their line, in their honor.

Except, everyone died at Ostagar.

Except, Fergus was still alive.

The bitter poison taste of the Joining had not left her mouth for the months that she had traveled Ferelden; it was thick and metallic, the taste of blood and betrayal, and it was heavier than it had been in months that day--the day she lied to the man who had done nothing but trust her and look to her for guidance.

She looked on with self-satisfaction when he went to Morrigan’s rooms, and left him behind in the morning.

The problem with Alistair was his love--it was heavy and it was useless and it would get him killed.

 

It happened like this:

 

Nobles were notorious gossips and diggers and their interest had little to do with you, yourself, your personality, and more to do with your background, and whom your grandfather slept with and whether or not your great-aunt was an apostate, and Alistair--

Well, Alistair could not prove who his father was.

The only trustworthy words to back him were those of Arl Eamon Guerrin of Redcliffe and (the gossips said) had he not just been resurrected from his deathbed by the self-same Grey Warden? And (the gossips said) just where was Arlessa Isolde?

Alistair did not want to be king.

And yet, before all the nobles, spiteful as a nest of snakes in their gathering, she took his hand and lifted it above their heads.

She put her own reputation, the reputation of her house, her family, her ancestral bloodlines, the grandfather who tumbled a serving girl and the great-aunt who was sent to a Circle, on the line--”We are just, we are temperate,” her father had always said to her, admonishing her for rushing into things, for her anger, for the way she broke relationships and burned her bridges.

Alistair did not want to be king but--here it was, from her own silver tongue: kingship, responsibility for a kingdom, life as a figurehead and, in exchange, marriage to the woman he had admired and loved for their entire journey together.

Marriage would ensure that that journey would not end. They would be together until they died: he could not hold the throne without her, she could not hold the throne without him. It was mutually beneficial, she insisted.

“I love you,” he responded.

 

It happened like this:

 

He did not ask why she had left him behind or why she still lived after slaying the Archdemon and she provided him a dowry from Highever to make the beginning years of their reign more comfortable.

He promises to love and cherish her, promises to never harm her for the rest of their days.

She wonders if, after all this time, how he can still love her when she can feel nothing for him.

 

Her hands slide from her lap onto the improbable swell of her stomach. Her head sings with whispers and her eyes snap into focus. Her hands are pale, shaky, nails blunt. Her fingers curl and the silk of her dressing gown rustles.

He has left her here like a piece of baggage.

They make good excuses, all of them: 

“The pregnancy is a miracle in itself, my lady.”

“You’re too far along to ride without risking the baby, your highness.”

“I have dreamt of this since before we were wed.”

And the last, followed by a kiss to her forehead. He turned and mounted his horse and rode away.

She had left him before, too, to take up a temporary post as Warden-Commander at Vigil’s Keep, but it was not the same--he had always been free to follow, always been free to do whatever he had desired.

He has trapped her here.

(But, the whispers in her head insist, did she not trap him here too? Did she not put the crown on his head herself?)

Her hands uncurl and she smooths out her gown, idly strokes her stomach.

“Do you think he has met your brother, my little one?” she asks, wonderingly. Her gaze turns back to the curtained windows where the sun has continued its march over the mountains. “Do you think he would even know?”

She is jealous of Morrigan, of the woman who left with no chains and thinks, wistfully, of heading to the mountains herself. But she chained herself to this throne, and she has worked for it, and she has bled for it.

She did not think she would ever become with child, not after Alistair had told her of the rarity of conception for Grey Wardens. She had never thought, before, of Morrigan’s child returning someday to claim his birthright from a younger, legitimate sibling.

“But they will love you more,” she assures her stomach. “You are not a witch-child, your bloodline is pure. You are justice. You are temperance.”

 

It happened like this:

 

The baby came early.

It was to be expected, they say to her, reassuringly. She is young, it is her first child (and she laughs through the labor pains), it is normal. The baby will be fine.

The labor is hard. The midwives whisper behind their hands when they think she is not listening (do they not know how often she listens to the whispers in her own head) and she cries through the labor pains and wishes, longingly, for Anders, and his healing hands, and for Velanna, and her comforting touch, and for Morrigan, and the snappish way she would have helped knit skin and bone and organ (and she is tearing, tearing, from inside out). 

“Did you do this to me?” she asks, feverishly, to the air. The midwives exchange glances, but, of course, they cannot see her standing next to the birthing stool, hands clasped behind her back and her golden eyes staring sharply, seeing everything.

“Is this justice?” she asks, and then cries out in pain. One of her waiting-women grasps her arm tighter and helps haul her back into a squatting position. “Is this for your own son?”

But Morrigan holds only disdain for the mortal kingdoms, for the human world, she cannot have a plan to position her own illegitimate witch-child as Alistair’s rightful heir.

She begins to cry.

 

It happened like this:

Elissa was gone.

He had returned to Denerim at the first courier message of the early labor but arrived far too late: the aftermath had been washed away, blood scrubbed by the roughened hands of workwomen.

“Her Highness has gone,” they told him.

She was not dead, as far as they knew, they said. They had put her to bed, to heal after the labor, and had returned, the next morning, to find her gone.

Had they not sent maidservants to watch over her? Where had her healers gone? There were no answers for him.

He was in despair.

It was too early for the calling, surely, and she was weak--how could she walk after a labor as difficult as the one she had endured? He needed to find her, knew he should’ve been able to, but despite the money he spent, the soldiers he sent out, no one had seen her.

She had disappeared.

And yet, and yet--

“And the babe?” he had finally realized, finally asked. “What about the child? Did it… did it--” the words stick in his mouth and he cannot vocalize the thought, that Elissa had left him, that all he had of her had died before he had gotten to see it.

But they brought him a bundle, small and delicate and wrapped in a soft, embroidered blanket Elissa had made, and held it out to him.

She had screamed, they told him, when she laid eyes on the child. They had tried to get her to hold the baby, to nurse, but she had lashed out and become hysterical, unable to control herself. They had given the baby to a wetnurse.

He took the bundle with cautious arms and held it, ever so gently, and moved the blanket away from its face and stared, reverently, at the golden-haired child in his arms.


End file.
